Pakistan’s Islamist media published a series of explicit calls for violence against India in the six weeks before the Hyderabad bombings — a development that analysts believe reflects the weakening of General Pervez Musharraf’s regime, and raises fears of a renewed wave of terror strikes.In an editorial published in the Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated Daily Jasarat’s August 19 Friday supplement, the newspaper demanded that the “slogan of jihad should reverberate in every nook and corner of Pakistan. If Pakistan allows jihadis to infiltrate into India then Kashmir could be liberated in six months.”
“Within a couple of years,” the newspaper asserted, “the rest of the territories of India could be conquered as well, and we can regain our lost glory. We can bring back the era of Mughal rule. We can once again subjugate the Hindus like our forefathers.”
Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, in turn, used the July 20 rape and murder of north Kashmir teenager to call for escalated violence. “The Indian Army,” he wrote in July 22 article published on the terror group’s website, “is raping the daughters of Islam. How can we tolerate this? We will kill every single soldier of the Indian Army and take revenge for the honour of our sisters. Let India deploy more soldiers in Kashmir so that our mujahideen have more pigs to hunt.”
According to Islamist publications, these calls for violence are legitimised by what they characterise as a global war against Islam and Pakistan. “India and other foreign powers,” Saeed told a congregation at Lahore’s al-Qadsia mosque on July 20, “are involved in the recent spate of bomb blasts in Pakistan. Only India could be behind the recent attacks because only a Hindu could do it. No Muslim can think of shedding the blood of another Muslim.”
The War Within
Much of the Islamist press’ ire is focussed on Pakistan’s own establishment — and the figure of President Pervez Musharraf. Writing in the July 30 edition of the Daily Jasarat, which has an estimated circulation of 50,000, Lashkar deputy chief Abdul Rahman Makki demanded that General Musharraf’s regime “discard the pro-United States policy th at has weakened the Kashmir cause. It is time to adopt a pro-jihad and pro-jihadi policy. You give us the country for six months and we will conquer Kashmir. We will also force the Americans out from Afghanistan.”
In another attack on General Musharraf, published on the Lashkar website on August 8, Saeed asserted that “Muslim rulers have disappointed the Ummah [worldwide Muslim community]. It is time to wage jihad against them. They are not Muslims. They are the agents of Jews.”
However, Saeed was careful not to endorse pro-democracy protests. “The answer is not democracy,” he wrote. “The answer is the caliphate.” He followed this up with an appeal to Pakistan’s military establishment: “Remember, O foolish rulers, the United States is not going to help you. Jihadis are your true friends.”
Soon after, Makki launched an even more acidic attack on General Musharraf at the Madrassa Ayesha, near Rawalpindi. Pakistan, he asserted, “is ruled by Ahmadis at present” — a reference to a heterodox Muslim sect officially proscribed in Pakistan, and long subject to persecution by Islamists. “Most of the top Generals and bureaucrats are Ahmadi.”
In order to counter this pernicious influence, Makki called for “jihad and martyrdom to be made part of the curriculum. They should be taught in textbooks at school, college and university levels.”
Several key members of the Musharraf regime have also been singled out for attack in the Islamist press. In an August 12 editorial, the Nawa-i-Waqt, which is estimated to sell some 2,00,000 copies daily, railed against Education Min ister General Javed Ashraf Qazi for the publication of a Grade II school textbook which omitted Jammu and Kashmir from a map of Pakistan. “The Education Minister,” it stated, “is a Jewish agent.”